


FF7 prompt fills and ficlets (ongoing)

by Tozette



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2018-10-19 14:50:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10642113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: Fills, Ficlets and scraps for Final Fantasy 7.Rating and warnings will change as chapters are added.





	1. Sephiroth, Aerith, Zombies: but friends don't let friends fight zombies on their day off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt. "Suddenly: zombies with Aerith and Sephiroth".

Feat. Turks, absentee Zack and a sad sad Sephiroth pls help him.

* * *

 

Shinra administration insists that Sephiroth take at least one afternoon a month off. This has technically been the case for all First Class SOLDIERS for years and years, but in the wake of Angeal’s defection they’ve suddenly started to enforce the policy. The mass SOLDIER desertion event has stripped them of Genesis and a whole heap of Seconds and Thirds, and with Angeal following soon after, it’s finally taught them to be a little… cautious. So Sephiroth is locked out of the mission roster and all training facilities until 7AM tomorrow, and never mind that he has literally nothing else to do with his time.

It’s barely an hour before he sends a PHS message to Zack.

PHS MSG: zfair@shinra 13:05:15: [What do other SOLDIERs do with their free time?]

PHS MSG: project.s@shinra 13:07:45: [catch up with friends. visit aerith in the slums. squats?? modeoheim is going to be freezing ill swap you]

This is less helpful than Zack might imagine. Since all two of Sephiroth’s friends left for good without so much as a note, and since Zack is in Junon prepping for his helicopter flight to Modeoheim, Sephiroth has kind of exhausted his supply of friends, friendly acquaintances and even people he knows in anything other than a formal professional context.

He eyes the message for a few long seconds.

He thinks the only person who can actually occupy large periods of time doing squats is probably Zack.

“No,” says Lazard, when he sees Sephiroth coming.

“I–”

“No. Don’t come back until seven.”

Sephiroth grits his teeth and clenches his hands into fists. “But–”

He knows he’s the most intimidating person between Midgar and Wutai – they literally put Sephiroth on posters for precisely that reason. Improbably, Lazard is utterly unfazed.

“Sephiroth,” he says, in that voice he gets when it’s killing him to keep the tiny fixed smile politely pasted on, “We in SOLDIER are not exactly overstaffed at the present time. If I could countermand the order, I would.”

By two Sephiroth’s apartment is spotless. It’s not hard to keep it that way, because it’s a clinical and empty space anyway. Sephiroth remembers Genesis’s apartment, how it was cluttered with books and old, beautiful things. Angeal’s was full of flowering plants, things that only grew in the soil he brought back from anywhere but Midgar. All these things are considered evidence now that they’ve both deserted.

By two forty Masamune is clean, every bit of leather Sephiroth owns has been cleaned and oiled and he’s considering scaling the outside of the building to get a smudge off the outside of his window. It’s almost a relief to find that he’s accidentally taken the laboratory copy of the paperwork for his last round of bloods.

He gets through the door and drops the papers off with Hojo’s possibly-a-cyborg receptionist, and that’s when he overhears a blank-faced woman in a dark suit say: “We think it escaped into the slums. They’re trying to track a it now.”

“Well,” says her companion, who wears a white coat and who Sephiroth vaguely recognises as one of the senior staff on Hojo’s experimental development team, “at least it’s just the slums. Imagine the backlash above the plate. Still, you must get it back… and keep it quiet. Shinra can’t afford bad PR right now… I have some tranquilisers that will work.“

He thinks the woman in the suit isn’t impressed by the implications of the researcher’s response, but they part ways before anything really damning gets said. Still. Maybe…

Sephiroth catches up in the corridor. It’s one long stride of his legs for every two of the Turk’s. She’s shorter than average, tiny and lightweight and probably very quick. “Did something escape from Hojo’s laboratory into the slums?”

She gives him a sideways look when he awkwardly falls into step. “Your hearing is better than expected,” she says. It looks like she’s making note of it, but since almost all of Sephiroth’s biometric data is on file anyway he remains unconcerned. “Yes. We’re to subdue and recapture it. We could use the help hunting it down. It’s more a job for SOLDIER than the Turks, but we’ve heard you’re… short staffed,“ she says.

He’s not sure if she’s trying to be delicate or cutting. There’s no polite way to comment that half of SOLDIER deserted to follow Genesis, and Sephiroth’s steady presence at the top is all that’s keeping morale afloat at all. “I can catch it,” he says, instead of lingering on those thoughts.

“Aren’t you meant to be off duty?” she asks suspiciously.

“Hunting monsters is also my hobby,” he tries, because a) it might as well be and b) the alternative is going to be staring out the window until he finally deems it late enough to sleep. Or _squats._

“…So you don’t mind if we don’t pay you for this one,” she says, suddenly and shrewdly, and then her smile gleams.

The Turk holds up one finger for him to wait but doesn’t break stride. “Boss,” she says into the receiver of her PHS, “I’ve got a solution. Yes. No. Yes. Not a gil.”

She ends the exchange with a click and her PHS disappears somewhere into her suit. “Can you move out?”

“Yes,” he says, because he never really goes anywhere without his sword and some kind of materia. Zack would probably find this a harsh comment on his social life but since Zack _is_ Sephiroth’s entire social life – well.

Anyway.

The Turk, whose name turns out to be Cissnei when she finally pauses and actually thinks to introduce herself, gives him the run down on their target in the lift and through the lobby. Her fastest walking stride turns out to be a sort of lazy amble for Sephiroth.

“Doctor Shelley hasn’t given us much on the target’s actual enhancements – she says it’s an experiment with mako enhancements, a failure, and not part of the SOLDIER program.”

Sephiroth nods. Failure is a term that gets thrown around Shinra’s science department a lot, but since it’s not a scientific term it remains… ill-defined. The scientists under Hojo universally considered Hollander’s Project G to be a failure, too, but he doubts any of them will volunteer to go toe-to-toe with Angeal or Genesis.

Cissnei hustles them into a slightly roughed up pickup – a very Turk sort of vehicle on reflection, because it looks just like the kind of thing used to deliver supplies and materials all over the plate. They tear down Loveless Avenue with another Turk’s low, snide voice supplying intel from where he’s performing recon - perched somewhere one of the plate’s major supports, Sephiroth thinks, from context cues alone.

“Shit, yo, I wasn’t expecting it to be so fast. Or so messy.” There’s a pause, a little nervous. “I’m not saying we can’t, but are we _sure_ they wanna capture it?”

“Shelley was sure,” says Cissnei in a tight voice, one which reveals a lot more of her feelings about the good doctor than her clipped briefing to Sephiroth had.

“Aw, shit,” complains her colleague, soft and tinny through the PHS. “We’re gonna lose Turks to that thing. It’s faster than the damned train and I bet it’ll take more than one tranq. North-northwest, heading into sector… shit, sector five. I’ll send an alert to the operation down there, but–”

He stops.

“Shit,” he says, and it’s less of the whining plaintive tone he’s been taking up til now and more honestly alarmed. “Target’s victims are getting back up.”

“They’re not dead?” Cissnei asks, confused.

“…No,” says the Turk on the other end, “they’re dead. Bleeding’s stopped, they’re not yelling or anything. Injuries are severe enough to kill. They’re fighting among… No. They’re attacking other people. Pretty consistent among the victims now.” There’s screaming in the background, muffled through the receiver.

Cissnei doesn’t swear, but the impulse is clear on her face.

“Did you catch all that?” She says to Sephiroth. “Twelve minutes,” she adds to the PHS.

“Twelve minutes is a long time here, and we don’t know if these dead assholes will pass it on to whoever they attack either. I’m thinking evacuate, but it’s your call. Evacuate or leave it?”

“Evacuate.” Cissnei doesn’t hesitate. “We can tell them there was a mako leak later. Quarantine the victims. Track the progress of the target but don’t engage.”

This seems to be exactly the news her colleague wants to hear. He is a Turk, though, so Sephiroth suspects he’d be equally sanguine about being told to cut his losses and drop the plate on the lot of them.

“I’ll be needed for evacuation and quarantine,” Cissnei admits. Her voice is cool and flat even as she careens wildly around a corner. “We’ll have coordinates for you, but –” She gives him a look, tight around the edges.

“I’m capable of operating without backup,” says Sephiroth. It comes out cold. There’s a part of him that’s a little offended at the presumption that he might not be.

“All right,” says Cissnei. She doesn’t question it.

The inevitable downward journey into the slums is a bumpy one, through one of the few passages in the plate. It’s dark and warm beneath, with that heady corrosive smell of the mako reactors fogging up all the air trapped below. Cissnei drives well but she doesn’t drive carefully. Sephiroth’s sure to come through any collision more or less unscathed, but he doubts she will.

The moment they make it into the slums of sector six Sephiroth can hear the roar of voices. A look at Cissnei tells him she can’t hear it yet, that it’s still too far away for normal human senses. To Sephiroth, it sounds like scores of people all just – making noise. It’s not using words or yelling with feeling or even moaning in pain. It’s just noise, like the cacophony of human voices is just a noisemaker in the hands of an unruly toddler. He’s never heard anything like it.

It takes another half a minute before it registers with his driver, and her face makes a complex series of expressions. “… Interesting,” she says, instead of whatever she’s feeling.

They drive on. The silence between them goes on, but the voices only get louder.

“If you’re on your way anyway,” says the male Turk’s voice into the swelling drone of the voices between them, “see if you can’t block off the exit into Wall Market next to the brothel–”

“Can do,” Cissnei says. “ETA three minutes. Coordinates?”

The voice returns a short string of numbers indicating a position somewhere in sector five, which Sephiroth mentally translates to an actual location – near the construction site that never seems to see any actual building. He knows it.

“What’s its direction?” he barks into the PHS, leaning in so his voice carries across the frequency.

Another voice drops in, also male but deeper and, by his dialect, better-educated. “North still.”

“This is where I leave you,” Sephiroth decides, shifting in his seat to make sure he has the tranquilisers Cissnei’s been provided for the mission. They come in syringe form, and Sephiroth wonders how the science department thought the Turks would administer them.

He hesitates for a second, and then adds: “Good luck.”

“I’m a Turk, General,” says Cissnei primly. “Luck is for SOLDIERS.” That voice on the PHS laughs wildly, more adrenaline than humour.

He’s not sure what to say to that, but happily Cissnei has to slow – marginally – for a hairpin turn. Sephiroth chooses that moment to fling open the door of the pickup and take his chances on the street.

  
It’s loud on the street. The minor insulating effect of the pickup’s shell is no longer there to help with the noise. It swells into a dull roar, voices in mindless concert bouncing off the metal buildings and supports below the plate. There’s nobody in sight, though, so whatever evacuation measures the Turks have taken are working. Sephiroth breaks into a run. Sector five. North. Right.

It feels good to be working. He’s had longer periods of downtime between field missions before, of course, but Sephiroth is contrary by nature – incidental downtime and recovery is fine, but just thought of an _enforced_ off-duty period has left him restless and itching for something productive to do. Now he has it and he goes to work with a will.

The escapee specimen isn’t hard to find – no wonder the Turks had such an easy time tracking it. It’s torn a bloody swath through the slums, trailing gore and twin stomach-turning smells of fresh death and old mako. When Sephiroth finds it, it has finally come to a confused stop between the construction site and a crumbling church.

The monster is roughly behemoth sized, with bigger teeth and minimal respect for little things like stone walls. Its roaring and carrying on drowns out the drone of voices.

It’s doing – something, shaking its huge head and snarling at something Sephiroth cannot see from his angle.

He hears the gunshots, though. They are a steady, quick _crack, crack, crack_ to add to all the ringing clamour in the air, louder than everything else.

The monster flinches back with a maddened wail of pain and rage. Beyond that, the bullets don’t seem to faze it. Pity.

That there’s at least one person behind its bulk there makes Sephiroth step up his schedule a bit. He has the tranquilisers, but he knows from long experience that Hojo won’t mind too much if a specimen returns missing a few pieces – internal organs should be intact, but limbs are really secondary to most of his experiments anyway.

Sephiroth definitely gets its attention when he cuts off its back leg. Masamune cleaves beautifully through flesh and bone, gleaming in the half light under the plate, and black blood goes flying across the rock and discarded scrap metal underfoot.

There’s a tremendous scraping sound and a shout from whoever’s stuck back there, and then the monster wheels clumsily around, spraying blood from the stump of its leg and roaring mightily. Thick, mako-tinted saliva drools from its teeth and its eyes are wild, glowing with pupils like pinpricks.

Sephiroth takes two steps back, testing, and ducks from the lightning-quick swipe of one massive clawed paw. It hits what might be generously called a shed instead and the whole structure goes tumbling down in a rain of splinelters and shards.

With one foot gone, it loses balance and struggles to right itself from the momentum of its strike. Sephiroth takes that opportunity to dart forward and leap.

He hits the monster’s huge back and almost tumbles off immediately, but gets a grip in its matted fur. He hauls himself up until he can balance in a crouch on its shoulders, automatically correcting his balance when it whirls around to find what’s attacking it from behind.

Once he’s this close, theoretically it should be child’s play for Sephiroth – he just needs to stab it with a needle and let the drugs do their job. He has trouble with the first tranquiliser. The skin’s too thick - which the science department must know - and Sephiroth snaps the needle half way down just trying to get it in. The second one is easier, because he knows what he’s doing now, but the monster’s roaring and thrashing doesn’t seem to abate or even really slow down.

He pauses, waiting to see if there’s an effect, but all he gets for his trouble is the monster flinging itself into the rubble of the construction site. A thick wooden beam cracks across Sephiroth’s left knee, hard enough that he knows he’ll be feeling it for days. He clings on doggedly, and when the monster gives an exhausted lurch beneath him he jams in another syringe and shoots another dose into it.

When the monster finally drops it does so with a huge shuddering sigh. It slumps to the ground and the nearby structures tremble.

Sephiroth gets down, only slightly mussed. There’s monster blood in his hair, somehow. There often is.

“You need to evacuate,” a man is saying somewhere behind him.

“We both need to evacuate,” says the insistent voice of a young woman, “which we can do once I’ve cast a cure–”

Sephiroth turns toward the conversation. There’s a teenaged girl kneeling next to what can only be yet another Turk. This one is tall, bald-headed and dark skinned and broad through the shoulders. He must be the source of those gunshots. He’s bleeding into the dirt, hunched over in the shadow of the crumbling church. Him being a Turk, though, means…

“I need to use your PHS,” says Sephiroth, approaching. His knee gives exactly the unhappy jolt he expects as he crunches over the dirt and debris and blood. He does not break stride.

“You’ve got one,” says the Turk, even as he hands his over.

“I’m off duty,” says Sephiroth, trying to find Cissnei’s contact. There. He sends her the coordinates and a rundown of the damage to the monster so she can either organise pickup herself or get somebody else to do it.

“Off duty,” repeats the Turk, looking past him at the monster’s unconscious bulk. His teenaged companion is an excellent materia user, because already he’s breathing easier and there’s more colour in his face. When she looks up at Sephiroth it is with huge green eyes framed by a spill of brown hair. He frowns and realises he knows her – or, rather, knows _of_ her. She has been described to him in exhaustive, laborious, painstaking detail, after all.

“You’re Zack’s flower girl. Aerith.”

She tugs a lock of hair away from her face. Her smile _is_ a little like the sun coming up. Zack wasn’t lying about that much.

“Nice to meet you,” she says, and if she’s at all offended by being known as ‘Zack’s flower girl’ it doesn’t show.

“Shit,” says the Turk, getting to his feet - which is when Sephiroth realises that the dull drone of people’s voices, once distant, has only gotten louder.

He turns just in time to see half a person stagger around the unconscious form of the monster. Behind her is another. Behind him, three more. They come boiling up from the south, where the other Turks’ efforts at quarantine have evidently been overwhelmed.

“She runs the materia shop,” says Aerith numbly, and Sephiroth follows the line of her sight to where a tall woman is making that awful noise, voice blending with the chorus. Her foot is hanging on by a thread, leaving a trail of clotted, too-dark blood where she drags it on the dirt. It doesn’t stop her lurching forward. A smaller boy falls into her, tumbles down, gets up and keeps coming. It’s as though he hasn’t even noticed.

“Reno?” Says the Turk into his PHS.

“Shit. Retreat and wait for backup. If you’ve gotta, aim for their heads” comes the strained voice from the machine. “Don’t let them bite.”

Sephiroth looks at the encroaching crowd. They’re not deft or clever, but there’s a lot of them. There’s no question he could fight his way through and keep himself from being injured, but there’s such a large crowd he’s not sure he could absolutely stop the others from being bitten. But they’re encroaching and they’ll have to decide fast.

“We could barricade the church,” Aerith suggests, with a lot more composure than Sephiroth really expects from her. “There’s water, and the walls are good. If we cover the windows with the pews–”

“Sounds good,” decides her Turk companion.

“If you go, I can clean up out here,” Sephiroth agrees, but then somehow he finds Aerith has threaded her arm through his and he is – somehow – being propelled into the church alongside her.

“You’re off duty,” she says cheerfully, “so you can wait for backup too.”

Sephiroth blinks, but then he’s blinking in the dimness and – oh. Nothing smells like mako refining in here. It smells like dirt and growing things. There are flowers, brightly coloured, pretty, thriving in the ground the church was built on. He breathes, and it’s like he’s been walking around faintly oxygen deprived and never known about it until just now, until his first proper breath.

The heavy church doors slam shut behind him.

Outside, the dead people drone on and on, relentless and hungry.

Inside, Aerith imperiously sets them to the task of barricading the windows. The old pews make good raw material for it. Sephiroth holds things up and the Turk fixes them in place with the tools Aerith digs up for them.

Then she sits him down and makes him tell her about Zack. And… Sephiroth has more amusing and frustrating Zack anecdotes than he realises.

They’re stuck there all night, until the Turks figure out a way to gas the dead people so they fall down and don’t get up again, like proper dead people.

Sephiroth leaves before dawn but Aerith puts her phone number in his PHS.

Lazard asks him to come in for debrief at seven on the dot.

“Why were you on site for a mission you weren’t assigned to, with a department you’re not part of?” is the first question he asks.

“I was visiting a friend,” Sephiroth says, and Lazard’s expression does something complicated and uncomfortable. Sephiroth is pretty sure he thinks he’s lying.

“Well, why did you not bother helping, when it was clear they’d run into problems with the quarantine effort?” is the last question he asks, and he does it with a sigh like he knows the answer but needs to ask anyway.

“I was off duty,” Sephiroth reminds him. He raises his eyebrows, just a little.

 

[Sephiroth has a handful of flowers for his apartment now. He keeps them in water until they go bad, and then he still doesn’t throw them away until they smell honestly terrible.

“You can just ask for more,” Zack says, and laughs at him. It isn’t a mean laugh but he’s not sure he likes it, either. “She’s not going to say no.”

He’s right. She doesn’t.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there was something you particularly liked, let me know in a comment. :)


	2. FF7 Self Insert?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous prompt: "Toz in FFVII world"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I figure as much as self inserts are cool, nobody wants to see A Whole Cast of OCs Doing Stuff In A Setting. So in order to put Toz in a setting where we actually might see her interact with some other characters I kind of had to think about what she could do.
> 
> She’s no SOLDIER, that’s for sure.

Toz lands herself in her boss’s office on a Saturday, which is one of the many ways she knows she’s fucked up.

Oh, don’t get her wrong – Saturdays are work days. All days are work days for Turks. But virtually nobody spends time in the _Turks_ ’ offices on weekends. They might still be bodyguarding and providing security and engaging in a bit of Shinra-sanctioned stalking and corporate sabotage, but they do their damnedest to leave requisitions and reporting for weekdays.

“Um.“ She looks nervously from Tseng to the window and back again. There isn’t anybody else in the office, and it’s very _very_ early in the morning. The sun’s still reddening the sky, pretty through the filthy Midgar smog.

The thing about Tseng is this: you can get him out of bed at three in the morning with no food, coffee or notice, and he will show up bright-eyed and alert, perfectly pressed and ready to get his hands dirty. His dark hair will be combed and gleaming. His shoes will be polished. His poker face will be impenetrable. And his pistol will be loaded.

Tseng is pretty much the model of what a Turk should be. It’s probably why he’s the boss.

Toz, on the other hand.

Toz.

Oh _dear_.

Her hair’s greasy. She knows it, and she threw it back into a messy knot at the back of her head without pinning up the weird short bits at the front that never seem to stay put, so it’s already falling out around her face. Her tie is AWOL and her shoes are scuffed. She was, at some point, wearing eyeliner – probably quite proud of herself at the time, remembering how makeup works – and now she’s wearing a sort of smoky smudgy panda-faced look.

“Hiii,” she says, slowly and carefully, edging into the office.

She feels guilty, even though she can’t remember what she’s done wrong. She hasn’t failed any missions, hasn’t handed any paperwork in late. She did tell Elena about the security footage of two lab assistants getting it on instead of watching Hojo’s specimen, but it’s not like she forgot to erase the footage or anything.

And Elena’s a Turk, and it was _funny_ , so what-the-hell-ever.

“Shut the door, please,” says Tseng.

Right, right.

She closes the door. Doesn’t hesitate. There aren’t that many people around, but God knows if he shot her nobody on this floor would bat an eyelash. It’s just a lot politer with the door closed. There’s soundproofing – it’s the done thing.

He can probably read her nervousness in her every movement, but he doesn’t mention her appalling acting.

“Sit.”

She sits. Order and action. Like a dog. (No dog has ever responded as quickly or as obediently to her as she does to Tseng. Maybe she should threaten them.)

Tseng lets her stew, because he’s an asshole. He doesn’t even get any joy out of it that she can tell. It’s just his natural state of being.

Then he sighs. “How long has Reno been doing your field work?”

Oh. _That_.

“Er,” she says, feeling her heart begin to beat even faster. Then, because she has obviously been caught: “Probably ever since it started looking halfway competent,” she admits.

“Yes – on that note,” he adds, and draws out a sheaf of paper from – nowhere, as far as she can tell.

She still knows what it is. That’d be the security report on criminal activity in Sector Five.

“Do you really think Reno knows what the word _recidivism_ means, much less how to spell it?” Tseng wonders.

Well… no. 

That’s… one of the things that’s wrong with Reno’s reports. Obviously. She opens her mouth to say this, thinks better of it, and then closes her mouth again. Tseng has probably already thought of it anyway.

The thing is this:

For Toz, field work is a nightmare of violent potential. The thing is, she’s not a bad Turk. She’s just not an ideal one. She… thinks, a lot. A _lot_. Like, okay, just this morning she almost missed her train because she got distracted finding gil for the ticketing machine, contemplating the relevance of the money system. The woman behind her had nearly brained her with a handbag.

When she does take field jobs, she makes sure she understands her objectives, researches hard and has fairly good critical analysis skills. She’s not even crippled by an overabundance of empathy or concern for her fellow man.

Field work, however, always has the potential to come down to violence, and that… that just makes her so dreadfully nervous. It’s the part where her judgement fails her, inevitably, and her thoughts start to race. When it all goes to plan it’s fine, but…

She still remembers the first time standing there, staring at a ‘business associate’ and thinking: _oh shit, he’s not going to agree._

On that occasion, there were three interminable minutes of waiting for him to finish talking so she could confirm his response and put a bullet in him.

The bullet didn’t bother her. Don’t be stupid.

It was the waiting there, second-guessing herself, letting him get around to actually saying what she already knew while her thoughts sped and her heart rate kicked up and she began to sweat. _I’m going to have to kill him_ , and _am I?_ and _should I not? Can I talk him ‘round?_ and _maybe he won’t say it, maybe we can slow this down_ – That first time, she almost had a panic attack on the spot.

Toz doesn’t like field work because she excels at overthinking, basically.

The reports don’t faze her in the slightest, however.

Not just writing them up, either. Frequently she’s the person who ends up compiling options and recommendations for others’ reports, digging through the secure archives and pulling up older case studies to see their outcomes, checking on figures and pulling up cutting-edge research to back up her suggestions…

That’s what she spends a lot of her time doing here, really: gathering knowledge, putting it together, and suggesting how to apply it. Then she smacks a security code on it, locks the prints, and leaves it on a chip in Tseng’s secure in-tray as per protocol. She has no idea if he even reads them.

On the other hand, Reno’s attitude to paperwork is… Well, on a good day it falls somewhere between ‘lol no’ and ‘kill it with fire’. He likes death-defying helicopter stunts, high-tar cigarettes and being so shitfaced drunk he falls off the floor. All of these seem like terrible, frightening ideas to Toz, and frankly Reno’s compulsions toward self destructive behaviours baffle her.

“Sir…” she says, rubbing her forehead. “The work gets done. It’s just… er, judicious reassignment of scarce resources to exploit them for… maximum efficiency,” she says, as delicately as possible. “It’s cost effective.”

And also much less uncomfortable for both of them.

Tseng’s face doesn’t even twitch. “No, it’s not. You know the reasons we require eye witnesses to write their own reports.”

It’s not like she’s making it up, Christ. Or. Gaia. Or whatever she’s meant to be swearing to here and now. She can’t think of anything smart – or even inoffensive – to say, so she keeps her mouth shut.

“I was hoping you would pick up on it before I had to get involved,” Tseng says when she doesn’t respond, “but if you don’t actually complete one of your own field missions before the end of the month you’ll lose your field certification. Not officially, of course, since you’ve forged the paperwork quite nicely. But field certification is there for a reason. You’ll be a danger to your partners.”

And Toz kind of wonders if this is a bad thing. She wouldn’t mind being behind a desk for the rest of her days. Not, thank god, in the science department or anywhere quite so appalling, but the work here is interesting and varied – and criminologically fascinating. The Turks are basically a corporate gang, a beautiful blend of ShinRa culture and organised crime. Their operation’s… just _unique_. And also very well-funded.

“You need your field certification,” Tseng says, having evidently seen the thought on her face.

Oh.

“I have just the thing,” he says, and she looks at another paper that’s mysteriously appeared in his hand.

He smiles faintly when he hands it to her, and she can feel a deep sense of dread wrap its cold fingers around her heart as she begins to read.

“…SOLDIER operatives… western continent… Wait, where? I don’t even know what that word is? Dra– does that say _dragons_? Boss–”

“Keep reading.”

She does, and somehow it gets _worse_. It goes from ‘dragons’ to ‘dragons gone mad from mako exposure’ all the way to ‘cave systems accessible by sewers’ to–

“–investigate the presence of new naturally occurring materia, including possible excavation options?”

She puts the page on the desk and looks back at her boss. Whatever nervousness remains in her isn’t directed at him. Sure, he could still shoot her – or she could go on this mission and get _eaten by fucking dragons._

“There are cheaper ways to kill me,” she says finally.

“The helicopter leaves on Monday morning. Lazard will assign the SOLDIERs for the mission then. Don’t be late.” 

She glowers. Opens her mouth. Closes it. It’s such an obvious dismissal, too.

“Sir,” she says tightly, then stands and turns to leave. 

“Turk,” he says from behind her.

She stops, but doesn’t turn back.

“You can’t palm this one off on Reno. He’s flying.”

Of course he is.

_Of fucking course._

“Yes, sir,” she says flatly. She leaves looking much less nervous than when she arrived, although her stomach is cramping and she can feel sweat rolling down her neck. Back straight, hands clasped – nobody’ll know they’re trembling.

The lift is blessedly empty but there is a security camera in one corner, and that means that somewhere another Turk is watching her.

Toz she stares into the mirror that makes up one wall of the lift. Her reflection is dark-eyed, tired-looking and grim.

Then she goes home to puke.

And... and to find her gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like something? Let me know in a comment. Otherwise, I know there's a little more of this languishing on my computer somewhere and I might post that at some point too.


	3. Time Travelling Cloud, outsider POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that Genesis and Angeal spend a bit of back and forth arguing about Cloud's sex so if that's something that bothers you, this isn't for you

"...Angeal." Genesis kicked him in the calf.

Angeal, being a solid wall of muscle, did not even twitch at the impact. He looked up from examining the delivery menu (grabbed, weeks back, from the only above-the-plate Wutaian place) to frown over at Genesis.

Genesis wasn't even pretending to pay attention to the SOLDIER program check requisitions on the desk in front of him anymore. Maybe that meant he'd given up on figuring out how to get himself reimbursed for six crates of apples. 'I wouldn't need to have them delivered if I didn't work in Midgar' tended not to go over well with Lazard.

"Look," he jerked his chin toward the window, sending wisps of dark red hair fluttering with the gesture.

Angeal followed his gaze.

Through the window and down on the street, there was a girl out under the greenish glow of the mako-powered lights. Angeal's enhanced vision got him a confusing impression: a slight thing, petite, with a head of unruly hair in some shade pale enough to be washed out completely by the light... and carrying a sword that looked enough like Angeal's own Buster Sword that he glanced to the corner of the office just to make sure it was still leaning against the wall there.

"She's either very strong, or that's a lightweight replica," Angeal said. He'd bet on a replica. Even if she had been strong enough to lift it, there was no way she could swing it.

"That's not a girl," Genesis scoffed.

Angeal eyed the figure down there uncertainly. From this distance -- more than forty floors up -- it was hard to tell. Genesis's confidence seemed unwarranted. Sure, the clothes were masculine -- a little like a trooper uniform, actually -- but the sliver of the face he could see from this angle, the hair, the shoulders hunched and arms crossed protectively over her chest...

"Isn't it?" he asked slowly.

Genesis rolled his eyes. "He's pretty, I'll grant you, but that's definitely a boy. Waiting for somebody, I suppose -- nobody would be hanging around in front of Shinra at eight pm for the fun of it. Still, that sword --"

"A replica," Angeal said with more authority, although he did lean further toward the window -- as though a few inches were going to make any difference to the view. It was a good replica, yes, but it didn't look at all right for somebody of that stature. Even if the person down there was a boy, their upper body strength still wouldn't be enough to wield Angeal's sword. They'd never get the leverage.

"I suspect it's a gimmick from the Keepers of Honour," he admitted. The Keepers weren't his favourite people, exactly, but he couldn't be too upset about people who admired him for his pride and honour. There were worse things to aspire to. "She's probably a member."

It helped a lot that he had the Silver Elite to compare them to. It was easy to look benign next to the Silver Elite, if Angeal was honest. The Silver Elite were... Well.

"Hmm," said Genesis. "Women are uncommon in the army."

"Not unheard of, though," Angeal countered.

Genesis clicked his tongue. "You're being obstinate."

It was really something to contemplate, the sheer nerve of Genesis accusing someone else of obstinacy. Angeal eyed him.

Then Genesis grabbed a paperweight from his desk and got to his feet.

...What was he doing with that?

Oh.

"Genesis--"

Genesis opened the window and tossed it into the street. Angeal winced.

"--you can't just throw things at complete strangers!" he hissed.

"You can if they don't know you're there," Genesis assured him.

Angeal twitched at the almighty clatter the paperweight made with its landing, but it did do exactly what Genesis wanted it to: the stranger with the sword twitched and turned and looked up, just as Genesis deftly drew back from the window

He had the bluest eyes Angeal had ever seen. They were bright and huge and bluer than the Banora sky. Not even the reflection from the street lights could dim the glow of them.

"...I stand corrected," Angeal murmured, finding it hard to look away. Any eye contact was an illusion at this distance. Even presuming they both had mako-enhanced vision, the angle wasn't even right. That boy definitely couldn't see either of them.

It didn't stop Angeal from feeling like he was looking right at them, though.

Frowning, Angeal said, "What's a trooper doing with that much mako in him? He's not a SOLDIER..."

Genesis hummed thoughtfully. Through a spill of hair, his eyes gleamed.

"You're right," he said, like he'd decided something, and Angeal glanced at the menu and the half-finished requisition with a familiar resignation building in his belly.

"Genesis," he began.

"Come on." Genesis was already slinging his long coat over one arm. "Let's go find out."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, Genesis is how Cloud blows his time travelling cover within about twenty minutes.


End file.
